Archives

Our archives are a repository of original thinking that chronicles two decades of research, analysis, and policy innovation. This collection brings together articles written by SFG’s founders and research analysts between 2005 and 2025, preserving the ideas, and insights that shaped our intellectual journey. These writings reflect the evolution of our thinking as we engaged with some of the world’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.

The archive offers a rich body of material for researchers, policymakers, students, journalists, and anyone interested in understanding complex global issues through a long-term strategic lens. The articles explore a wide spectrum of subjects, including peace and conflict, water diplomacy, international relations, technology, environmental sustainability, governance, security, and the changing dynamics of regional and global cooperation. They also place regional developments within broader international and geopolitical contexts.

Many of these articles anticipated trends and policy challenges that later became central to international discourse. Others document the development of concepts and frameworks that informed SFG’s subsequent research, dialogues, and publications. Together, they provide not only historical context but also enduring perspectives that continue to resonate in a rapidly changing world.

Beyond serving as a research resource, this archive offers a window into the intellectual history of SFG. It traces how our ideas evolved over time, how new policy concepts emerged through sustained inquiry, and how our engagement expanded from regional concerns to global challenges. Readers can follow the progression of our work across changing geopolitical landscapes and appreciate our evidence-based approaches to peace, security, and international cooperation.

Whether you are revisiting landmark analyses, exploring the origins of key policy ideas, or discovering our work for the first time, we hope these archives provide valuable insights, stimulate informed debate, and inspire fresh thinking about the future.

Turkey stays out of the pecking order

  • By Ranjini Ramaswamy
It turns out that Leonardo Da Vinci, may have had a Turkish mamma. A 60% chance that his mother was of Middle Eastern Origin, according to Luigi Capasso, the director of the Anthropology Research Institute at Chieti University, Italy. The mere possibility that the master of the High Renaissance in Europe had Eastern roots put a completely different spin on the clash of civilizations and the tired homilies we are so used to accepting.
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Reflections from Russia: A Conversation with Dr. Alexei Arbatov

  • By Ilmas Futehally
The US looks at the US-Russia relationship of the 1990s as model to be preserved. For us in Russia, this was our weakest moment, a disaster, never to be repeated, said Dr Alexei Arbatov, when I met him in Moscow last month. Dr Arbatov is member of the Russian Parliament (State Duma) and the Program Chair for nuclear non-proliferation at the prestigious Carnegie Moscow Center.
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Constructing Peace, Deconstructing Terror

  • By Sundeep Waslekar and Graham Watson
The body count increasing in Iraq, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and growing curbs on personal liberty in Western democracies are signs of just how wrong the war on terror has gone. We need a completely fresh approach to deconstruct terror and to build trust between Western and Islamic countries. We must also not forget that terrorism pervades strongly in parts of Latin America, Asia and Africa.
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Madonna in Moscow

  • By Sundeep Waslekar
In September when the world tossed and turned over the Holy Father's remarks on Islam and the coup in Thailand, Strategic Foresight Group was seized with the new order in Russia after the presidential elections in 2008. Foresight is about the developments of the future, not commentary on the events of the past.
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The Great Gamble

  • By Kumud Pallavi-Hebbar and Avanti Bhati
A volatile province, Balochistan has always proven to be a delicate issue for the political/military masters in Islamabad. More recently, the province has been up in arms against Islamabad's writ and continued exploitation. Despite having the largest gas reserves in the country, it supplies over 80% of its gas produce to Punjab and Sindh while it consumes hardly 17%. With minimal returns for all its gas supplies and having to depend upon Federal largesse the stark economic underdevelopment of the region has always been a rallying point for Balochis. This economic underdevelopment of the region when juxtaposed with the over bearing presence of the Pak military regime and the ethnic differences between Balochistan and the rest of Pakistan (read Punjab) results in the kind of insurgency that is currently being witnessed in the province.
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Children and War: A Session with Ambassador Olara Otunnu

  • By Rami Desai and Devika Mistry
Ambassador Olara Otunnu, a career diplomat, Under Secretary General for the United Nations and former Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. Ambassador Otunnu is a renowned expert on governance issues and has tirelessly worked towards highlighting and addressing the plight of children in war effected countries, as far spread as Uganda, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone (among others) promoting measures for the social integration and rehabilitation of these children in the aftermath of war as well as working on issues such as child protection, counseling, education in an effort to ameliorate both the short term and as well as long term negative effects of war on the development of these children.
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